The tuition of universities in Korea is the second highest in Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) nations, following by the United States. Recently, excessively expensive tuition of universities has caused a great conflict between universities and students in Korea. Some say the only way to solve this problem is that university tuition must be free for all students in Korea for a few following reasons.

However, I don’t think free tuition fee or half-priced tuition fee is the best solution. According to the supporters of the half-priced tuition fee, they insist on that universities of Korea do not only rely on tuition fee from students, but also they are financially free and have alternative financial resources. They say that universities can be secured their budgets by invested from governmental foundations. The supporters also refer to the list released by Scholarships for Development, universities in fourteen states in Germany do not charge tuition fee and it is acquired from collecting taxes from citizens. Universities in Finland do not also charge tuition fees since it has already been charged as a part of tax.

However, Korea is a capitalist country. The supporters’ insistence is just limited in the cases of Finland and Germany. These two countries are well known as social welfare countries. The countries spend a lot of money for social welfare. However, Korea does not have enough financial resources to support the free education. Some say that the universities should generate money to fulfill its status by running its own business. But the point is that half tuition fee policy supporters are confused about the original role of universities. Like their saying, if universities are the places to generate profit, not to teach students and if universities run their own business to support the free tuition or the half tuition fee, it is easy for them to forget their own goal, teaching the students.

In conclusion, the tuition fee should not be half-priced. Korea is not still ready for that policy and it has a danger to be abused by “wrong populism.” If so, the citizens can not be away from the disaster of tax for it. That is what I am most afraid of.